The Kerala Authority of Advance Ruling (AAR) ruled that the Printing of textbooks, Lottery tickets & stationery items for the State Govt is supplied under GST.
The applicant, Kerala Books, and Publications Society was constituted as a society by the Government of Kerala of the Higher Education Department. The society is registered under the Travancore Cochin, Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Registration Act, 1955. The said society is running the printing press till date. The Governing body of the society consists wholly of officers from the Government.
They have progressed into the printing of lottery tickets and stationery items like brochures, diaries, calendars, etc in addition to the textbooks for school children. Their customer for the printed textbooks and the lottery tickets is solely the State Government. In respect of the printed stationery items, the customers vary from the State Government and its allied educational institutions to other departments of the State Government. The State Government does not charge GST on the school textbooks supplied by it to the end customers; i.e. allied educational institutions. The school textbooks are supplied on a no-profit / no-loss basis to the said educational institutions. They have been incurring losses on the printing of the said school textbooks. In respect of all the above activity carried out by them the print content and its features that are to be printed is designed solely by the customer; i.e; the Government of Kerala. They only arrange the paper and then print the said content on the paper. They do not own the usage rights to the said content given to them.
The applicant has sought the advance ruling on the issue of whether our activities namely printing textbooks for supply by the State Government to its allied educational institutions; printing of Lottery tickets for vending by the State Government to the general public; and printing of stationery items like calendars, Diaries, etc for supply by the State Government to its offices and other institutions fall within the ambit of the scope of ‘supply’ under GST.
The coram of Members Sivaprasad and Senil K.Rajan all the activities undertaken by the applicant constitute supply as defined in Section 7 of the CGST Act. The activities constitute a supply of services falling under Heading – 9989 – Other manufacturing services; publishing, printing and reproduction services; materials recovery services – 998912 – Printing and reproduction services of recorded media, on a fee or contract basis of the Scheme of Classification of Services.
“The service of printing of Textbooks supplied by the applicant to the State Government is exempted from GST as per entry at SI No. 3 of the Notification No. 12/2017 Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017 as amended,” the AAR said.
The AAR further ruled that the service of printing of lottery tickets and stationery items like Diary, Calendar etc supplied by the applicant to the State Government are not exempted under Notification No. 12/2017 Central Tax (Rate) dated 28.06.2017 as amended.
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